Class Preparation: Assignments & Syllabus

My goal when I was trying to decide what assignments to give my students was to make mimic tasks they might have to perform in practice. This made a timekeeping assignment an obvious choice, but I wanted to challenge them more. More specifically I wanted them to practice skills and advanced their own skill set with each lesson. I also wanted them to engage in a bit of autodidacticism since tech competency is part of Florida’s CLE requirements.

For my first assignment, I wanted my students to reflect on the skills they lacked, pinpoint one they could expand on, and have them create a plan for advancing that skill throughout the course. This time it was two parts. The first was a creation of the training plan and the second was a reflection on the student’s progression and success with their plan.

I also tried to design two assignments that would allow them to use a bit of critical thinking and analysis when it came to legal technology and provide them the chance to engage in a way that made them a bit more confident of their skill set. The first assignment he’s a software valuation assignment where they have to compare three different software program and provide a short report on which of the three they believe is the best option and why. The second assignment is a technology that mimics going into an exhibit hall and finding a software that your particular firm may want to investigate adopting.

The final assignment was a lesson in leadership, collaboration, and teaching. It required them to work with a group to plan an additional micro-lesson with mandatory readings for one of the week’s topics. The final component was a reflection essay where they discuss the collaboration tools they used, any difficulties they had, and what solutions they found for those difficulties.

With each lesson, I wanted to include an element of reflection. true growth in any skill requires assessment at repeated intervals or else you risk becoming stagnant. This is my first time teaching this course, so I look forward to seeing student reactions to the assignments. I’m interested to see if they felt they were as helpful as I believed them to be. I will reflect on this and other aspects of my course in a future post after the course has ended.